He turned to the machine and began moving around from window to window, talking as he went. "Whoever's behind the password's been using one of the more popular chat rooms, in part looking for old car parts, but some other, much more interesting stuff as well."
He paused to cast a glance at Joe. "I won't bore you with all the computer geek stuff unless you're into that."
"Not me," Joe assured him, focusing on the screen. "But you said, 'whoever's behind the password.' You don't know?"
"I know Dan Griffis posted the profile using his real name, but technically, until we get more proof, he could claim somebody else did that to frame him. I just said what I did to be cautious, but do I think it's Dan? Sure. To be honest, old Barrie McNeil didn't look like he had the smarts to do more'n turn the thing on, if that.
"Anyhow," Barrows resumed, "I used a forensic software program we got to not only look at what he's been up to, but to read his supposed 'deleted' files, too. You can see he calls himself CarGuy-cute-and that he plays here a lot. I found more chats than I can shake a stick at, and most of it's recent."
The computer's cursor moved nervously across the screen, opening windows, closing others, almost as if it had a mind of its own, Rob narrating as it went along.
"A ton of this is pretty boring, so I went to the picture files as soon as I found a reference to a snapshot CarGuy wanted his contact to see. Worth a thousand words, right?" He laughed briefly as the computer burst forth with color photographs, primarily pornographic.
"So far, so good," he commented contentedly, "but not too surprising, either. Usual raunchy stuff. Until…" He paused while he scrolled to the right set of pictures. "… You get to this-it's what he was referring to in his chat."
He sat back to allow Joe a full view of several baggies of white powder, neatly arranged on a tabletop for their portrait.
"Heroin, I'm guessing," Rob announced. "I already cross-checked with the back-and-forth that led me here. CarGuy is dealing drugs on the side. I captured a whole conversation where he and SmokinJoe-whoever he is-set up a buy that took place two days ago."
Joe straightened and looked elsewhere to adjust his eyesight for a moment. "Did you…?"
But Rob cut him off. "Get warrants for all this? Yep. Step by step, all the way down the line. I've been calling the SA as I go, making sure everything's legal."
Joe nodded. "Okay. That's all I was wondering."
Rob was smiling broadly. "There's more, of course. Other deals, other dealers, other pictures. I doubt our office'll get to play with any of it for long. Maybe the drug task force will want it, or even the feds-I'll let the sheriff duke that out-but it's a cool start, and I love that we're the ones who got it going."
He returned to the keyboard. Given Rob's high spirits, Joe felt bad that he was, by contrast, mostly disappointed. Nothing mentioned so far tied Dan Griffis or the garage to what had put Leo in the hospital.
"No connections to my brother's accident?" he almost murmured.
"Not yet," Rob admitted, his voice upbeat. "I did take advantage of all this to do a search for your mom's name, and Leo's-just to see."
Once more the cursor was leaping about, and text blocks of chat dialogue cut in and out across the screen, making Joe slightly dizzy.
"Like I said," Rob continued, "there's a huge amount of material here, and I doubt what I found'll be the last of anything illegal. I mean, even the porno stuff is likely to get us something. But I didn't hit on any of your names-except in the billing and service documents, of course."
Joe suddenly sat straighter in his seat. "Go back."
Barrows froze his hand. "Where?"
"Maybe one click. I saw something. One of the handles, or whatever you call them."
"Screen names?" Rob asked, moving back.
"Yeah," Joe said, pointing at the screen. "What's going on here?"
Rob paused to study the document before them. "It's a general chat room. Bunch of people all talking at once. You do this sometimes, like at a party, when you're looking for someone special. When you do, you can ask that person to kind of step away for a private chat, like you were going into another room, just the two of you."
"What's the topic here? Drugs again?" Joe asked.
"Nope, it's the other favorite. Sex."
Joe tapped the screen with his index finger. "What about this one? What's he after?"
Rob leaned forward and began studying the exchange, scrolling through the short and, to Joe, virtually incomprehensible one-liners where almost every word was reduced to its purely phonetic root, if not merely replaced by initials-for example, "LOL" for "laughing out loud." The dialogue before him now might just as well have been written in a foreign language.
"Ugh," Rob finally said, sitting back.
"What?"
"Well, it's sex, all right, but what that guy's looking for is young girls. There's a load of that shit on the Web. You see it everywhere. CarGuy's not biting, though, doesn't even address your man-different interests." He twisted around to face Gunther. "Why?"
"It's the name," Joe admitted.
Rob returned to the screen. "Rockwell? Where'd you run into that?"
"I don't know for sure if I did. I've got a John Doe case we're working on where all we've got for ID is the motel registration-N. Rockwell. I laughed when I saw it, because it reminded me of the painter." He pointed at the computer again. "Probably a big stretch. It's not that unusual a name."
Barrows was already typing, moving to another display. "Everybody has to register a profile with the chat room. It's a legal thing. They all lie, of course, but you're supposed to be able to check each other out if you connect. Most pedophiles pretend they're nineteen, or something." He laughed shortly and added, "Course, we lie, too, when we're trying to catch 'em. But the format is basically name, age, where you're from, what your hobbies are, and so on."
He paused so Joe could see what was before them. "Of course," he then added, pointing out a warning message, "there's always the flip side, too. They put a lock on their profile. We'd have to get a subpoena to open it, and, for that, a good reason to request one. Slim chance, given the innocuous language I saw."
Joe nodded, his enthusiasm undaunted. Despite what he'd just said, he actually didn't think that the name Rockwell surfacing twice in odd circumstances was too likely. They had to be connected. "Going back to the chat where CarGuy was, too, can you tell if Rockwell does hook up with anyone?"
"Maybe" was the answer, as Barrows went back to work.
"Yeah," he said a few minutes later. "Looks like Mandi144 and he hit it off. They certainly go off together."
"And Mandi is…?" Joe asked leadingly.
Rob broke away from the computer to give him a sour look. "Well, let's put it this way: She says right up front that she's fourteen in the general chat. I'm guessing your Mr. Rocky wasn't." Joe nodded slightly. "My Mr. Rocky is also dead."
JMAN: U hav a pic or cam? Mandi144: cams broke – howz this? JMAN: wow. Hot Mandi144: U have a pic? JMAN: no. Im 6-1, tho. 170 Mandi144: no pic? How cum? JMAN: I can get 1. Id lik u 2 see me Mandi144: me 2 JMAN: Id lik u 2 do mor than that Mandi144: me 2 JMAN: how old r u again? Mandi144: 14. problem? JMAN: not a cop? Mandi144: lol. I look lik a cop?
Chapter 14
Joe reluctantly turned away from the view outside. It had started snowing again, after too many dry days. He was of a mind that if you lived where snowfall was the norm, then it should come about regularly and heavily, satisfying everyone's worst fears. People were going to complain about it anyway-they should, therefore, have good cause.
He surveyed the small VBI office. Sam, Willy, and Lester were all at their desks, each occupied according to character-Lester on the computer, Sam sorting through case files, and Willy harassing them both.